


Masters of Science

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 1950s, Alternate Universe, Doin it for science, F/M, Masters of Sex AU, Masturbation, RST, Smut, UST, Voyeurism (for science), questionable science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-06-05 04:14:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15162404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: Dr. Fitz is the preeminent mind at the university -- but he's touchy and tetchy and a bit bizarre. The university insists he hire an assistant for his controversial study of the female orgasm. He hires Jemma Simmons.A Masters of Sex AU.





	1. Arousal

“Oh – _oh yeah_ – oh _yes –”_

This was certainly not what Jemma Simmons had imagined when she’d submitted her application to become Dr. Fitz’s research assistant.

“Oh – oh – _I’m so close_ —”

“Proceeding from plateau to orgasm,” Fitz murmured.

She’d anticipated something out of the ordinary, to be sure. Fitz had such a reputation at the university. And she’d been rather desperate: despite graduating from the women’s college at thirteen and possessing a mind which Albert Einstein himself called “rare and luminescent”, Jemma had been rejected from the university medical studies program a dozen times for “lacking certain qualifications”, i.e. a penis. Unable to change the minds of the men who controlled the avenues of power, she’d instead pursued every possible alternative, so that her practical experience outweighed that of certified doctors twice her age.

“ _Yes yes yes yes yes yes—”_

Dr. Fitz wasn’t eager for her involvement. He’d made that abundantly clear in their interview. He was, as everyone said, a bit of a recluse, too intelligent to get along with the other, average-smart professors, a bit twitchy and sensitive to any perceived slight. Not that Jemma could entirely blame him. It was only through the force of her own thirst for learning that she managed to tolerate the meatheads they considered fit to walk these hallowed halls. So when the university insisted Fitz take on a research assistant, to keep him in line, and when Fitz decided Jemma was the least objectionable of all the applicants, she’d accepted, despite her friends all telling her she’d finally lost it.  

“ _Oh yes, oh god yes, oh – oh – oh – OH!”_

The woman on the other side of the two-way mirror gave a last, taut spasm and fell back on the hospital bed, sated, her hand still between her legs.

Fitz cleared his throat, made a note on the readings printing steadily from one of the machines, and clicked off his timer. “Resolution.”

Jemma went into the next room with a washcloth and a dressing gown for their subject, F15, indicating the fifteenth female to participate as such.  

“Next time will ya let me try the vibrating thingy?” F15 asked eagerly. Jemma watched her a bit enviously, noting that her nipples were still tight and her chest flushed with her recent pleasure. It’d been an unfair length of time since Jemma had felt that way. It was a bit difficult to find acceptable partners when one wasn’t interested in marriage.

“Dr. Fitz is working to make some final adjustments. We’ll call you in again when it’s ready,” she assured the woman.

“Great,” the woman gushed. “Best $10 I ever made.”

Jemma saw her out and returned to the office from which she and Fitz watched their participants.

“Only in America will you find someone _that_ unashamed by voyeurism,” Fitz muttered, seemingly to himself, from where he was bent over the print-outs.

“Only in America were you able to find funding for this research,” Jemma reminded him primly. “Is that the last for today?”

“What?” Fitz looked up, the end of his pen between his lips, and Jemma was reminded forcibly how young he was, despite the dark half-moons under his eyes and the patches on the elbows of his cardigans. “Oh. Yeah.”

She turned off all the machines and removed the sheets from the hospital bed before making them each a cup of tea at the receptionist’s desk . Fitz was fortunate she understood his intentions, even when he was too absent-minded to express them: when she’d begun working with him, he’d forget to tell her what to do half the time and then grow frustrated to find something missing or unprepared. After two weeks and nearly three dozen sessions watching men and women masturbate, she knew what to expect and could even anticipate his needs.

Oddly enough, she never got the impression that he treated her as such because of her gender. She felt he’d have been as forgetful, tetchy, and demanding with a male assistant. He’d have done the menial and secretarial work himself – had done, before she’d arrived – if he weren’t paying her for it.

But it was more than that. He didn’t only treat her as a human, with a brain and abilities and not just breasts and a womb – he treated her as a fellow scientist. That, for Jemma, was a first. And there were many quirks she could overlook for that feeling of equality.

“What I don’t understand,” he said now as if they’d been carrying on a conversation all this while, “is this spike here. I made a note of it at the time but couldn’t discern anything different in her motions. It doesn’t fit in to the stages.”

Jemma pulled up a chair next to him and placed a cup of tea by his elbow. He picked it up without seeming to notice that it had just appeared.

“This one here?” Jemma leaned into the lamplight to see the heart-rate spike he’d indicated. “That was at about three minutes, wasn’t it?”

Fitz cross-checked with another reading. “Two… Two forty-seven, yes.”

“I made a note of that myself. F15 brushed her side, just here—” Jemma touched Fitz’s side, just above his hipbone, briefly enough to be professional but lingeringly enough for Fitz to glance down at her hand in surprise. “I presumed it must be a particularly erogenous zone for this participant.”

“You know quite a lot about this, Miss Simmons.”

Jemma smiled and shrugged, drawing the papers closer to herself so she could discern the stages of sexual experience (arousal, plateau, orgasm, resolution), but Fitz didn’t move his hand and she found he was looking at her, directly but without embarrassment. His lips hovered near the rim of his mug as he waited, eyebrows raised.

“What?” she queried, feeling unexpectedly exposed under his gaze, like she was the one naked and writhing in the exam room while he watched.

“Where did a Sheffield girl learn so much about erogenous zones and masturbation?”

It wasn’t an impertinent question – not from Fitz, anyway. He just didn’t think to filter it, especially not with a colleague, which he’d accepted her to be. He was just genuinely curious. And whereas others would have thought to ask such a question at the beginning of their working relationship, nothing seemed to precede in regulated order with Fitz. Ideas and conversations happened when they happened and couldn’t be forced.

Jemma snorted at his question. “Does it matter? It’s all the same whether I learned it in a whorehouse or from a salacious extramarital affair or a dirty magazine or just from touching myself at night. It doesn’t mean much outside of this room, or outside of marriage.”

Fitz frowned, not in agreement so much as concentration. “Could you clarify that further?”

She was pressing into improper territory here, she knew. Her ideas were far too radical, even with another scientist, even with a _sex researcher_. But they’d built a kind of trust over the last two weeks, moving from curt, professional interactions into something more open and blunt, and if anyone were to listen, it would be Dr. Fitz.  

“Women,” she began, proceeding slowly, watching his reactions, “may only be sexual when men allow it. And even then, only _as_ men want it. Consider this very study – we’re essentially using men as controls, because so much is already known about male masturbation and orgasm. If a man knows how to get himself off, it’s bravo, old chap, end of conversation. With a woman, it’s a whole ordeal. Most women I’ve known wouldn’t _think_ about touching themselves. We are sexual beings just as men are, but our orgasms aren’t at all understood – they’re barely allowed.”

“So you want to understand the female orgasm for—”

“For liberation,” she finished for him, then flushed. It sounded foolish, when she put it like that, when she spoke about it this way in this sterile office with Fitz listening, the front curls of his hair enlarging in the steam from his undrunk tea. “Men think they’re necessary for us. They think we need them. If women could know that they can achieve this deep, fundamental pleasure all by themselves… It may in itself be miniscule, but it could be part of a broader liberation for women which I can only imagine is on the horizon, as irritated as we as a gender are with the present state of things.”

She expected – based on years of experience – to receive some sarcastic response or dismissal, for him to joke about a woman’s release leading to _women’s_ release – but he was regarding her quite seriously, eyes narrowed just slightly as if he were processing what she’d said. He didn’t comment, but he gave a small nod of understanding.

“You’re rather unlike most men I’ve known,” she murmured, hiding behind her own mug.

A little disturbance flitted across Fitz’s smooth face and he dipped his head a bit. “I know.”

Trust Fitz to be impervious to pointed attempts at engagement and conversation and then read a compliment as a critique. “It’s not a bad thing,” she assured him.

He looked at her in surprise. She just smiled slightly and returned to the read-outs from F15.

“She wants to come in for another trial and use the vibrator,” she informed Fitz as they studied the papers side-by-side.

“I heard,” he replied, sounding slightly amused. “If she’s amenable to it, it would also be helpful to register her responses to penetrative sex, whether with a live co-subject or an approved object.”

“I’ll broach the subject with her,” Jemma said. The lines were beginning to swim before her eyes; she sat back and rubbed at them, feeling Fitz shift beside her to look at her.

“I’d hoped we’d get a few more participants in, but the sign-ups are going down every day. This may be America, but it’s still the 1950s, and most people are still reticent about anything remotely erotic.”

“And there are still so many factors we need to monitor,” Jemma sighed. “For women alone, there’s clitoral stimulation, vaginal stimulation, g-spot stimulation, a combination thereof, time of arousal before beginning masturbation, with or without a partner, penetration or lack thereof, involvement of alcohol or a drug or some other stimulant…”

“I know.” Fitz tilted his head to each side, cracking his neck and rubbing his jaw. “I’m not expecting to study each variable, per se, nor provide a prescriptive finding indicating the optimal way for a woman to achieve orgasm—”

“Which would be a snipe hunt anyway, seeing as every woman and every woman’s genitals are different –”

“But we have to start somewhere,” Fitz finished, shrugging. “Demystify it a bit. Expand the body of work. Create some categories and vocabulary on which others can build.”

“Is that why _you_ do all this, then? To demystify the female orgasm? I always assumed you’d just grown bored of fertility treatments and delivering newborns,” she teased.

“Delivering a baby is _never_ boring,” he protested. “All that blood and bodily fluids –” He shuddered. “But someone has to do it.”

“Why, then?” she prodded.

Fitz’s eyes scanned the ceiling as he clearly debated answering her question. Finally he said, tugging on the edge of his ear nervously, “It’s stupid. But when I was fifteen and a junior in university, some of the older boys said I didn’t know a thing about sex and never would, being the cone-head I was. So I set out to prove them wrong. I told you it was stupid!” he exclaimed, as Jemma started laughing.

“No, really, I appreciate the level of pettiness,” she chuckled.

“It started out that way, anyway,” he continued. Jemma wondered what her friends would think if they’d see gruff, odd Dr. Fitz so casually sharing his life’s story. “And then I realized I found it fascinating, so I stuck with it.”

“If only those boys could see you now,” Jemma smiled. “They’d be out of their minds with jealousy – watching women come day in and day out? I rather think you bested them on this one.”

 

 

Jemma had given it a lot of though. A _lot_ of thought – so much she hadn’t really been able to sleep. She kept thinking about F15’s blatant satisfaction, their dwindling participation numbers, Fitz’s determination to classify and clarify the female orgasm, her own desire to free women from one of their dependences on men – and her own desire for a few other things, as well.

All this led her to march into Fitz’s office the next morning, not even letting him get in a greeting before she announced, “I want to masturbate for the study.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know very little about scientific procedure outside of what I see on TV and I watched S1 of MoS a year ago so am taking liberties across the board.... Just go along for the ride ;) Also, some notions of sex, gender, and sexuality will seem outdated b/c, you know, 1950s. I love fluidity so please don't take rigid binaries to be my own opinions ;)


	2. Plateau

“Abso _lu_ tely not.”

“Dr. Fitz.”

“I won’t allow it. I can’t!”

“Dr. Fitz,” Miss Simmons repeated patiently, watching him calmly as he wove around his office, picking random objects up and setting them down again. How could she be _calm_ about this? What she was suggesting was preposterous!

“It’s inappropriate on so many levels.”

“I promise to display only the utmost of professionalism.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he growled. She looked frankly _amused_. Liked seeing him worked up, did she? “It’s not proper scientific procedure for one of the researchers to participate in a study—”

“Technically I’m only an assistant,” Simmons reminded him primly.

He snorted and gave her a withering look. “You can knock that off, alright? I know I only hired you as an assistant because that’s all they’d allow, but we both know you’ve more than pulled your weight on this. You’ll be co-author on the paper, if I have my say.”

This – more than the idea of _masturbating while he watched_ – seemed to startle her, her rouged lips parting with sincere surprise. “I will?”  

“Of course,” he mumbled, waving his hand to dismiss the topic. Her enthusiasm embarrassed him; sharing authorship with her was only right. “Which is why you can’t participate.”

“I could be an anonymous entry – F16. No one but us will ever know.”

“But you _know_ the parameters of the study. The participants, they have no idea what aspect of orgasm we’re studying. The men probably think we’re studying them, rather than using them for comparison. But you, if you did this, which you _won’t_ , would know all about the stages and the factors we’re monitoring and—”

“Not an issue,” Simmons cut him off.

“ _Not an_ – if this is how you approach science, no wonder you haven’t gone to medical school,” he muttered.

“Not an issue,” she pressed on, her normally warm eyes steely, “because the logical, scientific part of the brain isn’t particularly active during orgasm.”

“You’re a neuroscientist now, are you?” he shot back.

“Oh come _on_ , Fitz,” she cried. “Answer me honestly. When you’re hot for it and you’ve got your slick, aching cock in your hand, can you _seriously_ say you’re able to focus on anything but stroking yourself to completion?”

He dragged both hands down the sides of his face in exasperation. That was _not_ an image he needed first thing in the morning, especially not with his pretty female colleague sitting in his office with her knees bared by her skirt. “That’s hardly—”

“I’ve thought it out,” she said firmly. “I’ll be just another anonymous entry. We need as many participants as we can, and you said yourself sign-ups are dwindling. What we’re doing would hardly be sanctioned by most members of the scientific community to begin with, so to hell with their standards for proper scientific procedure. This is important research and I want to help.”

Fitz sat back on the edge of his desk, feeling a bit weak at the finality in her voice. Technically he could pull rank on her, claim as lead researcher that he had final say, tell her she couldn’t – but he already knew he was going to say yes. And that prospect – what it would mean, what it would _look_ like – was alarming.

“I don’t want you to feel pressured to do this,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you to feel you have to – to violate yourself, just to further the project or your role in it—”

“I don’t. And it won’t be a violation, believe me,” she assured him, lips curling up in a smile that he was beginning to believe was incited by enjoyment at his discomfort. “I expect I’ll find it quite pleasurable.”

He stared at her for a beat, disbelieving that he could’ve ended up with the one research assistant who was both a) smarter than him, b) annoyingly persistent and logical and _right_ all the time, and b) a siren who was sure to slowly kill him. Then he dropped his head in his hands.

“Bloody hell,” he grumbled. “What is _happening_ to my career?”

“I expect it’s about to explode. No pun intended.”

He looked up at her, ready to snap again, but she looked so pleased with herself he couldn’t help feeling pleased for her as well. Sighing, he scratched his beard to give him time to rein in his peevishness. “Sorry I shouted. And ragged on you. And put up such a fuss. I know you’re just trying to help.”

“Apology accepted, though frankly, I much prefer it to being treated like a fragile little baby bunny or dismissed out of hand, which is what I normally experience.”

“Noted,” Fitz smiled. “I’ll take that as permission to not hold back.”

“Oh? Have you been holding back up to this point?”

He shook his head at her, not to answer her question but in playful chiding. (He wasn’t sure he’d ever _been_ playful before. And in the _workplace_.) He pushed off from the desk and was surprised when Simmons rose as well.

“Shall we to it, then?” she asked brightly, tugging down her dress.

His mouth dropped open, brain working frantically for an excuse. He’d hoped to have at least a few hours to get used to the idea. “Now? You want to do it _now_?”

“Why wait? We don’t have any appointments today, unless I’m mistaken.” Which she wasn’t, of course, and she knew that, because she was the most organized person he’d ever met.

“Er – right then. Let’s – let’s.”

 

 

“Fuck fuck fuck shit bollocks fuck bloody fucking shit—”

Alone in the observation office, Fitz went through paroxysms of agitation, sitting and standing and sitting again, re-checking the machines and that they were stocked with paper and all the readings from the next room were normal. A few doors over, Simmons was removing her clothes and preparing to touch herself in front of him. Which was fine, as he was a scientist and a professional and she was a colleague and now a participant and he’d seen this dozens of times before in his research. Hell, he’d stuck his hands up women’s vaginas in the course of his work.

But this time – this time he was looking forward to it. And that made him feel like a lecher. He’d offered – more to preserve his own dignity and purity than hers – to sit out on this one, to remain in his regular office, to let the machines do their work while she did hers, but she’d insisted he needed to be monitoring the readouts in case there was a glitch in the machines and she didn’t notice until she’d finished. “I’d hate for it to have been a waste of time,” she’d said, not sounding at all like she thought she’d regret anything about it, no matter what happened.

In the next room, the door opened and Simmons stepped through, wearing one of the threadbare, off-white robes the hospital issued study participants. She was barefoot but her hair was still up. She couldn’t see Fitz through the mirrored glass, but she smiled in his direction anyway.

He pressed the button for the intercom unit. “Do you –” He had to release it to clear his throat. “Do you need help attaching the sensors?”

“I’ll be alright.”

She slipped the robe from her shoulders and draped it neatly over the doorhandle. Fitz – making sure the intercom was off – cursed; she was all pale curves underneath, and she’d left her strand of fake pearls on.

He turned away, a hand over his eyes for good measure, while she very precisely placed the sensor pads on her temples, on her neck, and over her heart. The machines in Fitz’s room immediately began picking up her vitals, though they wouldn’t start recording the information until he told them to.

“I’m ready now, Fitz,” Jemma called.

He clenched his fists once, quickly, then turned back. Simmons was sliding up onto the hospital bed, her bent knees hiding the juncture of her thighs.

Of course it would be this way. He’d seen dozens of naked women, and not once had he found them more than passingly beautiful – never, until it was the one woman so obviously far above him.

“Tell me when you begin,” he squeaked into the intercom, then released the button like it was on fire.

Simmons rested back against the raised hinter half of the bed. Her breasts rose with every breath, the sheen of the pearls catching the light so the eye was drawn to the movement. She tilted her neck each way, as if working out a bit of tension, then nodded. “Go.”

In rapid succession, Fitz started the timer and set the machines to record. He waited to be sure they were registering the peaks and valleys of her heart rate and monitoring her temperature and a few other factors before he looked up again.

Christ.

The other men and women had been fairly business-like about it all. They’d seemed flustered at first, making awkward jokes, but when he’d told them to start, they’d wasted no time.

Simmons – Simmons’s hands were nowhere near her center. She was tracing her fingers over her jaw, down her neck, along her sides, watching her own hands with half-lidded interest. He could see muscles twitch or tremble as she traced over her stomach and along her thighs.

“Arousal,” he whispered to himself.

That was it, really, the only way to keep him sane throughout this. He’d focus on the science. He’d focus on looking for the markers of sexual arousal and orgasm. It was a case study. That was all.

Her eyes slipped closed, her head tilting slightly towards the mirrored glass so he could see her every microexpression. She swirled a finger around one breast, drawing closer and closer to the nipple, and she licked her lower lip. It shined like the pearls, and Fitz imagined a cascade of luster, from her eyes, to her lips, to the pearls, to her core.

When she squeezed her nipple, her lower back parted slightly with the bed. Her nipples didn’t swell up like many of the other women’s had, which Fitz thought was objectively interesting. Maybe they weren’t as sensitive or arousing for her; she didn’t linger there.

Her right hand ghosted over the soft ripples of her stomach and rested a moment on her pubic bone, tracing aimlessly over the beginnings of her thatch. Apparently entirely unhurried, she next pressed along the outer lips of her center as if testing for a reaction.

He could see the moment she decided to begin in earnest. Her chest rose in an especially deep breath and her knees fell wider apart so he could – _oh god_ – he could see everything as it happened. Her inner thighs were tan with freckles, and a sweet pink peeked from within the protective cloud of brown hair.

Her hand slid all the way down to the bottom of her opening and back up again and Fitz let out a strangled groan.

Simmons shifted on the bed with a telltale restlessness. Her fingertip swirled further inward, still teasing.

Then she dragged her fingers up and touched her clit.

She let out a breathy sigh, the first sound she’d made since she started. Fitz felt like he was winding up with her. He was craving her release as much as she was.

He wished she’d get on with it.

Within a few minutes of beginning to massage her clit, Simmons’s vital were registering the signs of having reached the plateau stage. Her face was flushed with concentration and arousal and need, her lips moving in occasional silent entreaties, her unoccupied hand clenching and unclenching beside her. She’d need to change something, do something to take herself past this delicious, frustrating stage, or risk crashing back into dissatisfying wasted arousal.

He could hear her wetness. There wasn’t even a microphone in there besides the one on the desk for conferencing between the rooms. She must be wildly aroused.

He wondered what she was thinking about. What she was seeing behind those fluttering eyelids. What was getting her off.

Her hand was moving faster now, her fingers starting to blur. Before, she’d gone for circles, which probably could’ve been measured with pi, if he knew anything about Jemma Simmons, but the action was more like rubbing now, her hand vibrating side to side and in broader, sloppier circles, matched by the unruly response of her hips. Her jaw was tensed, her face drawn in desperation.

“Come on, Jemma,” he whispered.

She made some spreading motion with her second and third fingers, pressing down and around as she did, and she careened into her orgasm with a few stuttered moans. Her whole body trembled for a few seconds as her hand jerked a few more times before falling still.

She slid down into the resolution stage. Fitz felt as dazed as she looked. It was so short, the orgasm, so deceptively small, but it could feel so world-ending – even if you weren’t the one having it.

Her right hand, still glistening with her wetness, rested on her stomach as she caught her breath. She rolled her shoulders like someone just waking up, then lazily pushed herself up onto her elbows, looking towards him.

“Alright?”

Fitz dropped the timer and had to dive for it under the desk.

“Yeah, got it,” he croaked into the intercom when he’d scrambled back up. “Seven minutes and, er, twenty-two seconds,” he reported, rounding down to account for his addle-brained delay in stopping the clock.

“Brilliant.” She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her center back to being a tantalizing bit of darkness. “Give me a moment and I’ll be in to look over the results.”

That moment was enough for Fitz to make himself look less wild-eyed, and not enough to talk himself out of something rash.

“I was thinking,” he began, as Simmons – back in her dress, smelling slightly of sex – perused the readouts, “I should probably do the same. Participate, I mean. Only fair.”

“What?” Jemma glanced up from the paper, marking her spot with the very finger she’d used on her clit. “Fair?”

“If I, er, participate.”

“You mean masturbate?”

“Yyyyesss.”

She frowned. “I wouldn’t want you to do it out of some notion of needing to apologize or thank me or create a sense of balance, of course, but if you’re doing it of your own free will, I don’t see why not.”

He wasn’t sure what he had right now was his own free will, so much as a well of lust and hormones for which he had no outlet, and he was sure he’d regret it as soon as he had a chance to jerk off, but if the worst thing he ever regretted doing while horny was masturbate for science, he’d feel relatively alright about his life.

“You don’t have to monitor me, though,” he said quickly. “That’d be a big imposition and I’m perfectly capable of—”

“Don’t be silly, I’ll gladly return the favor,” she murmured, already back to the readings. Was she _that_ unmoved by the notion of seeing him wank? “Go wash your hands and we can start right away.”

“Oh, not now,” he blurted out. “I have a, ehm, meeting.” The meeting was with his cock. It was far too much in control of his actions at this point and were it not for his large cardigan Simmons would’ve noticed that too. If he had to do it now, in front of her, she’d see him come in under a minute, and that would just be embarrassing.

“Tomorrow then.” She faced him, crossing her legs. “I’ll monitor you, and then you can monitor me again.”

“Again?” This was a pure, ripe hell. Perhaps the university or some scientific review board had sent her as a spy to torture him into giving up the project.

“This time I’d like to pleasure myself using penetration as well as clitoral stimulation,” she explained matter-of-factly. “Variables and all that.”

“Brilliant,” Fitz said faintly. “Thanks, Simmons.”

“Dr. Fitz, you can call me Jemma. You’ve already seen me naked.”

He didn’t tell her he _had_ called her Jemma, without thinking, when he’d been begging her to come.

 

 

 

As it was, Fitz barely lasted the next day anyway. He’d seen Simmons – Jemma – when he came in that morning, in dark blue slacks and a patterned blouse, and she’d squeezed his arm in encouragement as she handed him his robe, and now all he could think about was her squeezing his cock. He seriously considered angling himself away from the glass so she wouldn’t be able to see anything but his back, but that hardly seemed fair considering how much he’d seen the day before.

He was wearing a condom, just to minimize mess – “ _another_ variable”, Jemma had grumbled – and he flushed as he had to go back to the bottle of lotion for a second palmful as he sought to lubricate himself. Knowing what he did about the acoustics of the room, he could only imagine what noises the microphone must be picking up. He hoped Jemma didn’t find it all disgusting.

This wank ended up being a tug-of-war between the part of him that couldn’t stop imagining Jemma’s parted lips panting just inches from his tip and the part of him that was sure she’d have to leave the observation office to be sick from watching him.  The sizable dose of self-loathing notwithstanding, his twisting grip on his shaft had him quivering on the edge between plateau and orgasm in minutes. Losing himself, forgetting his audience, chasing his bliss, he reached down with his left hand to cup his balls, and he came, abdomen clenching, nearly falling off the end of the bed.

Jemma did her second round immediately following his. She nearly halved her time and actually squirted as she came, something Fitz had never seen in all his research and work. He meant to ask her what was different today than the day before, to make her come so hard and so fast, but that thought and every other vacated his mind as she came down from her orgasm only to plunge her fingers into herself again and drive herself into a second, loud climax within minutes. The walls of her cunt visibly clenched and Fitz ached to know the exquisite smothering of its embrace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to Fitz for rushing through his masturbation but writing one was enough haha. Besides, he finds watching and describing Jemma much more exciting than relishing his own wank ;) 
> 
> Also, I know this walks a line in terms of workplace creepiness, but please know that both characters are consenting and want it and give each other outs and seek to not make each other uncomfortable and keep their lust to themselves instead of forcing it on each other. (FOR NOW)
> 
> Next chapter: Orgasm


	3. Orgasm

\

There had been something newly tantalizing about the curve and jut of Fitz’s Adam’s apple, rough with stubble, since their respective masturbatory sessions. Jemma found herself studying the shadows across it, its rapid bobs up and down as Fitz swallowed, the way it thrust out when he tilted his head back to stretch. She doubted it was widely considered an erotic body part, but having seen its companion downstairs, she couldn’t shake the resemblance. Short of provoking Fitz until he got a tent in his slacks, this was the only bulge she’d be presented with.

She sighed and shifted on the hard chair, brushing Fitz’s arm on the desk as she moved. Had he always been sitting so close?

“You alright?” he murmured.

She couldn’t very well tell him she was uncomfortable because his scent and scruff and nearness had her ratcheted up past work-appropriate levels of attentiveness, so she just smiled and crossed her legs, savoring the press of his hip to hers. “Just a bit stiff.”

Fitz nodded jerkily and splayed his hands out on the latest read-out. Did he realize how unfair that was? She’d seen him wrap those fingers around himself, stroking quick and hard; seen him fondle his testicles; seen those fingers shining with his ejaculate. Even now, hunched as he was, entirely buttoned up beneath a plaid shirt, she could envision the smooth lines of his back muscles and the tension in his thighs as he’d come.

“ _Jemma_.”

“Wha--?” Her fantasy, wanking Doctor Fitz had said her name, which was when she’d realized real Doctor Fitz had been talking for almost a minute now and had obviously asked her a question.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Sorry, what’d you ask me?”

“This bit here,” he repeated slowly, as if talking to a small child. “The man’s already well on his way to orgasm but she’s just stuck in plateau. If anything I’d say she’s dropping backwards out of that stage instead of moving forward. And here…” He slid his finger along the lines, the sound amplified in Jemma’s ears. “This is when he comes, but there are no comparative indicators for her. Do some women experience orgasm that differently? I thought she was a rather loud one…”

“I think it’s rather obvious,” Jemma admitted. “She faked it.”

“She _what_?”

“She faked it,” she repeated patiently. “The orgasm. She never actually came. She just put on a show to make it seem like she did.”

“Why would she – why would anyone—“

Jemma smiled at his indignation. “Firstly, she probably assumed she was _supposed_ to come, for the purposes of the study. She might’ve been afraid we wouldn’t pay her if she didn’t. But more likely, it’s probably instinctive at this point. When a man asks if you’re about to come, you just say yes and pretend, whether or not you’re actually aroused at all or dry as the Sahara.”

“But _why_?” Fitz reiterated, clearly flabbergasted. Jemma decided now was _not_ a good time to mention that his naiveté, especially as a sex research, was adorable.

“The male ego is fragile,” she explained, tugging the read-out from under his palms and folding it carefully, knowing the information wasn’t worth further analysis now they’d determined half of the involved parties hadn’t even orgasmed. “For some women it’s a matter of safety. They need the man to think so much of his prowess that he won’t hurt her. I’m sure others simply assume it’s easier to let him get himself off and then take care of herself later.”

Fitz processed this for a full minute, the pink lower curve of his mouth dangling open. Jemma remembered the way it’d drawn taut in his orgasm.

“Wouldn’t you want to tell your partner?” he asked, just when she’d begun wondering if she shouldn’t splash him with water or wave a glass of whiskey under his nose to revive him. “Rather than going on about that for years, wouldn’t you want to tell them you weren’t coming so you could work together to make it happen next time?”

Jemma had to squeeze the sides of her chair to keep herself from kissing his cheek. “Yes, that would be ideal. But many people find themselves in relationships where that honesty and trust and intimacy aren’t possible, for various reasons.”

“That sounds awful,” Fitz said flatly.

“It does,” Jemma agreed, then shook her head, smiling. “Fitz, tell me again how you managed to grow up with such a unique perspective on the world.”

He shrugged. “Imagine it was a result of living with the coven.”

“The c—?”

“There are a lot of them in Scotland. Americans would probably say they’re cults, or something, but for us they were just insular communes, more often than not with a matriarchal power structure.”

It was Jemma’s turn to gawp. “ _What_? That’s _fascinating_. Sometimes I wish I were an anthropologist. Was your mum part of the—”

Fitz couldn’t hold it anymore and a grin popped across his face. Jemma gasped and smacked his arm.

“You made that up!”

“Of course I did. You think I lived with a _coven_? Of witches or something? I grew up in Glasgow, Simmons. Had a house and everything.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“We could use a coven right about now,” he sighed, frivolity deflating as he looked down at the folded paper. “A group of free-spirited, sexually liberated women. We’ve got so little to go on and unless we get at least one more couple registered, we won’t even pass the lowest threshold for an acceptable sample size.”

 _One more couple_. Jemma found her collar was suddenly extraordinarily tight, her palms sweaty.

“One more couple,” she said quietly.

“Yeah.”

She glanced at him and found he was looking at her; they both looked away quickly, chairs scraping on the floor as they hastened to be casual.

“I suppose—“ Jemma began, just as Fitz blurted out, “This might sound crazy—”

They blushed and chuckled and turned a bit on their seats to face each other.

“You go,” Fitz insisted, nudging her knee with one hand.

“I’m sure you’ll have a million objections already queued up, and I’m prepared to hear them out and I obviously couldn’t force you into this, that would be ten shades of awful, but given that we are two consenting adults of the requisite gender specifications for this study, and if we acknowledge that it’s essentially a business transaction and we set limitations on touching and kissing, I think we should—”

“Yes,” Fitz cut her off quickly, looking like his skin would actually start to boil with embarrassment if she went on. “I think we should too.”

 

 

 

Which was how Jemma found herself standing barefoot on the linoleum floors of the study room later that day, in just a bathrobe, facing Fitz, who, despite wearing boxers, was trying to cover his crotch without actually looking like he was covering his crotch. She wanted to laugh; the whole thing was ridiculous, or at least that was how she was choosing to view it, because actually thinking about the fact that she’d momentarily be engaged in coitus with Fitz for the sake of scientific research was not something she could easily process.

“Rules,” she said, breaking a lengthy silence. “As in, we should set some. Boundaries.”

“Yes. Good. Right.” From here, she could see the little happy trail that fuzzed its way from belly button to crotch. “Er – you said no kissing, right?”

She’d regretted that the instant she’d suggested it. It made perfect sense, in terms of maintaining professionalism, as kissing was certainly linked with a degree of emotional connection and affection, but to experience Fitz’s body against hers and not be able to kiss him – she’d almost rather not have his body at all. ( _Almost_.)

“Yes,” she agreed, forcing aside her reluctance. “No dirty talk.”

Fitz blanched. “I wouldn’t’ve—”

“Just needed to put it out there.”

“Foreplay?”

This threw Jemma for a loop. She’d seen Fitz stroking himself and could only imagine how it might destroy her to have him take her apart the same way. But that seemed dangerously unprofessional.

“No,” she decided, her already-slick pussy pulsing angrily at her as she did so. “I think we’d best stick to the … the basics.”

“Got it.” Fitz started to rest his hands on his hips, then seemed to realize how much that exposed him, so he went back to twisting his hands in front of him. “I’ve got the condom.”

“Good.” Jemma felt herself approaching something close to hysteria. “Shall we just – attach the sensors and get started, then?”

She finished setting herself up first and realized they hadn’t discussed which position they’d use, but it seemed too late now, the tense silence too thick for her to speak. She’d leave it to Fitz to tell her if something was off.

She sat on the edge of the hospital bed and scooted back. The bathrobe started to ride up and she went to tug it down, but then she decided there’d be no use for it in a moment anyway, so she untied it and let the sides fall open. She didn’t remove it entirely; somehow that felt too brazen.

Fitz, finished with the various wires and machines, turned to find a strip of nudity through the edges of her robe. His eyes bugged out and he fumbled the condom – fortunately unopened – onto the floor.

He kept his head down as he pulled down his boxers. He was mostly hard already; no foreplay needed, indeed. Jemma felt a tingle of pride that just the barest glimpse of her body and abstract thoughts of sex with her could turn him on. She licked her lips, which had gone startlingly dry; his cock was a deeper red than she’d realized, than she’d remembered from watching him jerk off. It wasn’t unlike the color inside her vaginal lips, now that she considered it; there was a beautiful symmetry to that.

He rolled the condom on and hesitated – boxers still ridiculously slung around his buttocks and under his balls – before walking around to the side of the bed and climbing up next to her. Jemma wanted to smooth a hand along his side; that’s what she’d do, try to calm him, try to make him feel beautiful – that’s what she’d do, anyway, if they were a real couple.

“Alright then?” he asked gruffly.

“Ready when you are.”

He supported himself with one arm on the far side of her body so he could drop his hips between her legs. His hip bones were cool, an unexpected jolt beside the heat of his cock. Jemma’s breath quickened and the robe slid open, mostly baring her chest.

“Do you want me to…?” Fitz’s fingers wiggled a few centimeters from her core, stirring the air.

 _Yes_ , she pleaded in her head, but they’d set a rule, and she was nothing if not a rule-follower.

“That’s alright, just ... in you go, then!” she said with the most bizarre cheeriness she’d ever heard in her own voice.

Fitz’s cheeks were nearly purple now, but touch was steady on her thigh as he took himself in his other hand and pressed into her.

It didn’t feel _good_ , Jemma had to admit, and she wished she’d accepted his offer to warm her up. It wasn’t a thing to do with his cock itself. Far from it: rigid inside her, it pressed her outwards in every direction, which only made her want to grip it tighter. But Fitz was holding himself up, not touching her anywhere but where he absolutely had to, his gaze on her shoulder, and the whole thing was entirely _too_ professional for her.

“You can move,” she coaxed gently, tilting her hips slightly.

He grunted slightly, slipping onto one forearm so his armpit was somewhere near her forehead. He smelled like soap and sweat and _there_ he was pressing into her again, beginning with long deep strokes. His belly clenched on every pass and she wished he’d just relax onto her so she could feel the ripples of his muscles.

But while she could feel the heat and tension in his body building, hers was disappointingly nonresponsive. She still found him maddeningly attractive, no trouble there. But lying there as she was, prone and calm, she found herself, frankly, bored.

“I have to thank you, Fitz,” she panted, as he thrusted twice in quick succession, “for not treating me like so many other men have.”

He made a garbled noise above her, his breath tickling her nipples.

“I mean it,” she went on, prattling, giving in to that sense of the surreal. “You’ve always seen me as an equal, even though I’m a woman.”

He looked up at her, eyes dark with lust, brow furrowed in abject confusion. He seemed to search for words for a few moments before murmuring, “Never really saw you as a woman, I guess.”

Jemma could feel herself slide right out of arousal into whatever preceded the stages of sexual engagement.

 _Never saw me as a woman_? Certainly he hadn’t meant it that way. Then again, why would he feel comfortable masturbating in front of her unless he didn’t see her as a viable sexual partner? It was no doubt her intellect. That had always intimidated men. He probably wanted some neat little button-nosed housewife who couldn’t even calculating the change at the grocer’s without an adding machine.

 _Never saw me as a woman_ , she thought indignantly. _I’ll show you what a bloody fucking woman I am_.

And, despite being nowhere near orgasm herself, she began clenching her walls around his cock, gripping it every time he pressed into her. Her hands, for lacking of anything else to do, grabbed her breasts and squeezed them roughly, right in front of his face.

“Oh, _Fitz_ ,” she purred, rolling her eyes at herself. “Oh, _yes_ , I’m _so close_ , ooooohhh…”

Fitz groaned. His hips were suddenly snapping against hers without any semblance of control. His fingers tightened in the sheets on either side of her, his face screwed up just like it had when he’d masturbated, and he crested, back arching, head lifting away from her as he pulsed, whimpering slightly.

Jemma patted his shoulder as he came down from his climax. He shuddered a moment, still bracing himself above her, before pulling out and sliding back on his heels away from her, his spent cock drooping in its condom sheath.

He stared at her crotch for a moment, chest heaving, his expression starting to make Jemma feel hungry again, before he seemed to realize what he was doing. He winced and swung his legs around to face away from her, removing the condom carefully. With a tiny sigh, Jemma did up her robe.

She watched his bum as he walked to the wastebin. It had probably looked delectable, clenching for purchase as he humped her. Shame she hadn’t been allowed to touch it.

Fitz sat heavily on one of the stools near the bed. He shook his head. “I feel a bit dirty,” he admitted, crossing his arms over his bare chest. “Like the orgasm wasn’t deserved.”

“Welcome to the club,” Jemma muttered.

Unfortunately, Fitz heard.

He squinted at her. “What d’you mean?”

“Well—oh, nothing, don’t bother,” she wheedled.

He studied her for a moment, his gaze startlingly intense as it roamed her exposed collarbone, her cheeks, her hair, her thighs. Then he gasped.

“You didn’t come!” he accused.

“It doesn’t matter—”

“Of course it matters!” he spluttered. When she arched her eyebrows, he flushed. “For – the science! The study! The results will be moot!”

“I’m sorry,” she said, not feeling a bit sorry; wasn’t like it was her fault, after all. “It just wasn’t happening. That’s how it goes sometimes.”

Fitz grabbed his hair with both hands, looking just about set to tear it out. “You should’ve told me,” he growled, clearly trying to control his voice. “I feel like an arsehole. Fragile male ego and all that.”

“I didn’t want to disturb your pleasure.”

“Yeah, well next time—”

“ _Next time_?”

Fitz’s cheeks bloomed an even darker shade but he scooted forward, eyes determined. “Simmons. _Jemma_. Do you trust me?”

Jemma’s core tightened with a hot, rushing intensity, provoked not only by the certainty that she did trust him, a great deal, but also by the tone of voice with which he was speaking. It wasn’t remotely professional.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Fitz’s eyelashes fluttered. “Then let me try again. For – for the study.”

“Are you sure you can go again so soon?” Jemma demanded, deflecting her nerves into a subtle jab at him.

Fitz yanked on the elastic of his waistband and checked inside his boxers. “Yeah, not a problem.”

She held his gaze for a long, taut moment. Just as before, she could feel herself growing wet and needy just from the pull of his nearness and eyes. But her anxiety was now tangled up in insecurity about not being able to come, about being incompatible with this man she found so enamoring, about disappointing him and herself. Honestly, she really, really wanted him to make her come, but she was afraid he wouldn’t be able to, and they’d both blame themselves.

“What if we try it like this?” Fitz murmured, standing, dropping his boxers, his previous nerves no longer apparent. “Same rules as before, just… looser. Just doing what … feels right.”

She nodded, unable to speak, as he approached the bed once more and traced his fingertips up her thigh, pushing her robe up until she was exposed again. He traced once along her inner thigh and around and down to her knee, letting her untie the robe and slip it off her shoulders, leaving her fully naked for the first time.

Fitz knelt on the bed next to her, then frowned.

“How about…”

He gently took her wrist and guided her up towards the far end of the bed so he could scoot in and lay down.

“I’ll be on top?” Jemma asked breathlessly.

“If that’s alright--?”

“I think so,” she said hastily.

Fitz laid back, his cock along his stomach, a new kind of nervous intensity about his face. Jemma crawled forward until she was straddling him, knees squeezing his hips.

“You okay?” Fitz murmured, stroking her arms and thighs. Jemma felt her nipples grow erect again, little goosebumps of desire all over her skin.

“Yes,” she answered, earnestly this time.

“Brilliant.” He settled back, grabbing another condom from the adjoining table and easing it on.

When he was ready, Jemma wriggled slightly, adjusting her seat. Fitz closed his eyes, obviously already aroused by what she was doing. She shook her head; men had it so easy.

She ghosted a hand down his chest and over his abdomen, scooping under his cock to draw it up. She nearly moaned at the weight of it as it filled her hand. She considered giving Fitz a handjob, skirting the attention on her entirely, but he’d made it quite clear he wanted her to come.

Rising up, she brushed the tip of his cock over her folds a few times, just barely bumping her clit, and she was surprised and relieved and terrified to feel her desire coiling. Hoping to seize it before it skittered away again, she slid down onto him.

They both moaned this time. Fitz gripped Jemma’s hips and she grasped his wrists, steadying each other, steadying themselves.

“That feels good,” Jemma whispered.

Fitz’s eyes flew open. He smiled and brushed a hand down her jaw. “I’m glad.”

Jemma began to rock slowly, experimenting with the position, occasionally bucking forward, occasionally rolling her hips one way then the other. These swivels seemed to have the most effect on Fitz, whose dazed gaze was tracking her swinging breasts.

“You can touch them,” she breathed.

He didn’t even hesitate. His strong, calloused fingers on the thin skin of her chest made her press forward and down, stimulating her clit between their pelvises. He rolled her breasts in his hands, the nipples catching between his fingers.

“Like that?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she gasped as her arousal ratcheted up into that heady, tunnel-vision level.

As she knew from touching herself, Jemma would have to start slow and build towards something that bordered on rough and heavy. She was approaching that now, far more quickly than she’d anticipated.

Fitz suddenly sat up, catching her nipple in his mouth and her clit between their bodies. She cried out, body thrumming with his attentions. This new position didn’t let her keep riding him as she’d done before, and she humped against him, desperately trying to maintain and increase the friction.

And then Fitz flipped her over, back into missionary position, but it was _nothing_ like what they’d done earlier. He hitched her leg up over his hip and continued to nuzzle and suckle her breasts and palm her arse as he thrust into her.

“Harder,” she begged into his ear, cradling his head down against her chest.

Obediently, Fitz began to pound into her, drawing out little mewls with each dive. Jemma found herself laughing even as she nearly cried from need; it was just so much more than she’d expected from her workday.

Fitz lifted his head to look at her, and it was electric. The room was silent except for the slapping of their hips, the creaking of the bed, their panting breath. Jemma felt she was about to explode, and all she wanted was to keep taking him into her.

“Fitz,” she whimpered, grasping his face with both hands.

“I know,” he breathed, and he kissed her.

 


	4. Resolution

 

Abstract sex torture. 

 

That's what Fitz decided on, what he decided he'd coin the new phenomenon he and Jemma had invented, standing side by side watching other people have sex while he ached for her. A new kind of torture. 

 

He regretted kissing her. No -- he glanced at her reflection in the two-way mirror, her expression deeply studious, lips slightly scrunched as she watched the subjects fornicating in the next room. No, he didn't regret it. It had been _good_. It had been hard and heady and a bit like grappling with a sea urchin that's locked on, and they'd both come shortly afterwards, still kissing as they ground messily together. 

 

But Fitz regretted that it had to happen like that. Yes, technically it was consensual. It was objectively the least erotic thing he'd done during the whole encounter. But it had _meant_ something for him, had expressed something he'd intended to save for a less confusing occasion, and he couldn't be sure it had been anything more than another orgasmic stimulant for Jemma. She seemed as distracted this morning as he felt, true, but he suspected it was because she was attempting to brainstorm the best way to remind him they had a professional working relationship and nothing more. 

 

"Fuck yeah!" the man in the next room cried out. He wasn't anywhere near to climax, as far as Fitz could tell, but he'd been doing that the whole time, punctuating their copulation with exclamations like a footie fan watching an exhilarating match. The woman under him looked bored. Fitz winced and apologized silently to her.  

 

"She probably wishes she'd signed up for the solo trial," Jemma murmured, once again in sync with his thoughts. 

 

Fitz chuckled. "Should we pull the fire alarm to help her out?" 

 

She glanced up at him with a tiny, grateful smile, as if thanking him for letting their dynamic begin to return to normal. He felt doubly terrible for making things awkward. She'd said, explicitly, that she was grateful he treated her like an equal and appreciated her for her mind, and here he was consumed by thoughts of her body. Any contemplation of asking her out for a proper date -- or just another go, for starters -- would need to be suppressed. Even more than never touching her again, he'd hate if his lust interfered with her comfort or her career. 

 

He sighed, his breath fogging the glass so he couldn't see the couple on the other side. For honestly the first time since he'd begun this line of research, he felt a surge of self-pity for his persistent sexlessness. 

 

"Fitz -- Dr. Fitz," Jemma corrected herself, and he winced, "as it seems we'll be here for a while, I'd like to address something with you. Make something clear -- or clear the air, as it were." She paused, frowning, clearly thrown by not having the exact saying she wanted to use. 

 

"You don't have to," he said quickly, desperate to forestall the awkward confrontation. "I know it was unprofessional--"

 

"Yes, it was, wasn't it?" she breathed, and when she looked at him he was thrown to find her eyes were shining. 

"Um--"

 

"I can't stop thinking about that kiss," Jemma admitted. "And not just that, either -- I --" Her cheeks flushed the same color as the blood that was rapidly leaving his head and making it difficult to process anything. "I went home and I -- I was able to reach climax again, twice, just thinking about what we'd done." 

 

The next instant he had her pressed against the glass, her respectable belted-at-the-waist dress hiked up above her garter from the way he was kissing her and gripping her hips. Like a traveler crawling through a desert and finding an oasis just as he's given up on ever tasting water again, he kissed her as fervently as he knew how, committing her to memory should she change her mind. 

 

He pulled back once to scan her face, not believing the way her hands settled comfortably around his neck, for all the world like they belonged there, for all the world like they wanted to be there, preferred being there over anywhere else. 

 

"Is this okay?" he whispered, the anonymous couple's moans a muted soundtrack. 

 

"Do you need me to collate the data?" Jemma laughed. "Yes, Fitz, this is okay. Better than."

 

"But you said -- you were so glad I didn't see you as a woman --"

 

"/No/," Jemma corrected patiently. "I said I was glad you could see a woman as an equal. Or your superior," she added stealthily. 

 

"So..." Fitz bit his lip and looked at her mock-shyly through his lashes, gently tickling her sides with his fingertips. "You don't mind if I like you for your mind _and_ your body?"

 

"As long as you don't mind that I like you the same."

 

Grinning, he kissed her again, cradling the back of her head against the glass. She kissed like she researched: enthusiastically, thoroughly, brilliantly. 

 

"I'd understand you liking my brain," he murmured, continuing the tenuous thread of their conversation while nuzzling her cheek, wanting to prolong the build-up to something more intense, "but my body? Maybe you need glasses, Dr. Simmons."

 

"My vision is fine," she huffed, pushing him away, and for a moment he was sure he'd blown it, but then she was using the space between them to drag down his zip. "There are different applications of the word _brain_ , Doctor. And I find _all_ of yours beautiful." 

 

His hands slipped from her shoulders to the glass, framing her, as she slid her cold fingers into his boxers. It was a position that should've made him appear more dominant but he was entirely, deliciously under her control. 

 

She stroked between his legs, brushing forward over his balls and the base of his shaft. Everything from his navel to his knees tensed in anticipation. 

 

She wiped the pre-cum from the tip of his cock with her thumb and leaned in towards him, hand still on him, as though about to divulge a secret, when someone banged on the glass. 

 

They both jumped. Unfortunately Jemma also squeezed -- not enough to set him off handjobs for life, but enough to make him yelp. 

 

"Hey, we're done in here!" shouted the man from the next room. 

 

"I didn't even notice," Jemma whispered, relinquishing Fitz. 

 

"Me neither," he admitted, and they chuckled. 

 

They did Roshambo to decide who'd go to see their study participants out. Fitz, losing, kissed her quickly and avowed, "I will be _right_ back, I swear."

 

But when he ducked back into the tiny viewing room not two minutes later, she was gone. 

 

Her underpants, however -- a deep purple and very practical -- were pinned on one of their sample charts of the human trajectory of sexual experience. She'd stuck a pin right through the incline of 'arousal'. 

 

He found her in his office, though come to think of it he'd always thought adding a second desk would add a certain _je ne sais quoi_ to the place. 

 

"As I understand it," she said playfully, circling the room while he watched her thirstily, admiring his trophies and plaques and paintings, "you're a bit of an expert in female pleasure, Dr. Fitz. Care to demonstrate? 

 

The fake wood of the desktop chafed his back and shoulders and he had to cling to the top corners, twisting his arms awkwardly to hold on, but he didn't mind. Jemma rode him until her thighs shook. 

 

 They cuddled on his couch afterwards, having agreed the desk was fun for a one-time shag between horny nerds but not comfortable otherwise. Stark naked, they traced each other's bodies in soft silence, the skin and curves somehow far more personal than that belonging to the dozens of people they'd watched. 

 

"Jemma," Fitz said quietly, playing idly with her hair, "would you-" He blushed and shook his head. 

 

"If it's a fetish, I can't promise I'll feel comfortable doing it, but I won't judge you for it," she said easily. 

 

"No!" he gasped. Maybe she had a point about him being the most easily shocked sex researcher in the business. "It wasn't -- this isn't personal."

 

She glanced up from her hand over his heart, frowning. "It isn't?"

 

"No, of course /this/ is, honestly you're the most obtuse genius I've ever met..."

 

"Genius?" she asked brightly. He groaned and wrapped her around the waist, dragging her snug to him.

 

"I'm trying to ask you to keep making crazy science with me," he grumbled, though his attempt at gruffness fell short. 

 

Jemma inhaled and covered her mouth dramatically. "Oh Fitz, those are just the words all girls long to hear!"

 

He laughed at her, even as he ruffled her hair. "Is that a yes?" 

 

"Of course," she smiled, wriggling onto her other side so he was curved along her from behind. "Though I still want to go to medical school."

 

"Tell you what," Fitz whispered, speaking into her hair as they both gazed at his office windows, imagining the future. "Let's get filthy rich and start our _own_ school. Simmons and Fitz Academy." Of course he'd put her name first -- he wanted to keep getting laid, after all. 

 

"Hmm. Maybe Fitz-Simmons. Has a flow to it." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And they did. 

 

 

 


End file.
